“WE will be better” was the message from Ange Postecoglou after his Celtic side blew a two-goal lead against Legia Warsaw in pre-season last night.
The Scottish Champions raced into a comfortable lead through goals from Reo Hatate and Daizen Maeda before their Polish opponents controlled the second period and struck back to bring the match level.
The friendly encounter was a celebration of the career of goalkeeper Artur Boruc, who has decided to hang up his gloves after a 22-year stint in football.
And following the game, Postecoglou expressed delight over the moments of quality from his team, but he admitted that his players must cut out errors ahead of the Scottish Premiership campaign getting underway.
He explained: “Yeah, it was OK. There was some good stuff there, some not so good stuff and a lot of stuff just to do with pre-season. So a bit of a mixed bag but a useful exercise
“It was some good football but we can be better, we will be better. We're in our phase of pre-season where the boys are working hard and we're making some mistakes that are not normally there because of that factor.
“But again, it's the only way we're going to be good this year if we for work hard through this period because once the games start, we won't be able to.
“[There are] examples of where it can improve in the first half. Second half, there's always examples. The point of the exercise now is not to 'win games of football', the point of the exercise now is to prepare the team to win games of football.
“With one of the upsides now is to prepare and same to win games or football. Today was another process for us where we need to keep building and working hard in training to make sure we're ready when the real stuff kicks off.”
Postecoglou refused to agree that his team had shown signs of improvement over the course of pre-season so far, stating that his team have worked hard over the course.
He added: “I don't think there's anything dramatic there. I think we've shown the right sort of characteristics from the first day of training.
“We've purposely built this pre-season programme to get ready for what's ahead. Midweek European trips are part of that process.
“So making the guys go through this and being able to get back up on a Saturday is going to be important. It's all it's all part of it.
“From my perspective, from the first day the boys have been good, they're working hard and we need to keep doing that right until the first game.”
